“State rights” was a common
refrain by the eleven U.S. member states who sought to exit in 1861; the
underlying fear was that the exclusive competencies, or enumerated powers, of
the U.S., combined with the numerous accessions of new states, were already
compromising the power of the eleven states to protect their economies from “encroachment.”
In 1858, for instance, a tariff disadvantageous to those economies had been
passed in spite of the “Southern” objections in the U.S. Senate. Had each
member state had a veto, rather than just the ability to filibuster, the eleven
states would have been able to protect the viability of their respective
economies from encroachment by the Union. To be sure, the state rights claim
that the U.S. was still just a bloc, as had been the case from 1781-1789 under
the Articles of Confederation, was sheer denial, for the U.S. Constitution
instituted a new kind of federalism—partly national, partly international—based
on dual sovereignty, wherein both the member states and the Union have a
portion of governmental sovereignty. It is this form of federalism, “modern
federalism,” that the Europeans adopted in creating the European Union because the
E.U. has exclusive competencies. But whereas the shift made by the Americans in
the eighteenth century left the state-veto behind at the Union level, the
Europeans retained the veto, which at the very least works against the
effective operation of modern federalism. The arduous and much delayed task on
a reparations loan for Ukraine in spite of the self-interested objection—and thus
promised veto—of one state is a case in point. Even the alternative of the E.U.
issuing debt faced state-level opposition, as was the case in the U.S. in the
1790s, but in that case, the self-interested states that were relatively clear
of debt could not stop the issuance because none of those states could wield a
veto at the federal level. This is important because back then, the American
states were still widely viewed as countries by their respective inhabitants. “I
must fight for my country,” General Lee told Lincoln in 1861, referring to
Virginia. A refresher on American history could help Europeans cross the
Rubicon to a more internally consistent modern federalism. Whether Euroskepticism
or States’ Rights, the ideology, as etched into the E.U.’s Basic Law, is
responsible for Van der Leyen’s headaches in getting the E.U. to put Ukraine in
a position of strength against the Russian invaders.
The full essay is at "A Reparations Loan or Common Debt."
